Diagrams: Two perspectives on the Emishi

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  |    Jomon>         Emishi >               |                             Ezo>                                Ainu                                                  

  |    (prehistory)  (proto-history, Tohoku,Hokkaido)    (post Heian Hokkaido)     (pre-modern and modern Hokkaido                                       

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This diagram represents a summary view of the website, and shows a straight line from the Jomon people of pre-history to the Emishi, and from the Emishi to the Ainu, though the two were distinctly different culturally due to historical circumstances and changing cultural influences. They were not exclusively made up of those with Jomon ancestry, but most were.

The above diagram shows that the Emishi proper, those who resisted the Japanese Yamato state, were mainly Jomon with the addition of mixed descendants of half Japanese kofun and half Jomon Emishi. These latter were not Japanese but rather Emishi since they adopted the latter's culture and presumably their language. Even those with half Japanese parentage were mainly Jomon since they were settlers who were descendants of Kanto kofun and Jomon Emishi. The Emishi later split into two groups: the ones who submitted to Yamato rule became Tohoku Japanese, and became more culturally and ethnically Japanese; the second group became known as the Ezo, the people who continued to resist Japanization both culturally and politically who lived further north on the Tsugaru peninsula, and on the island of Hokkaido. Those living in Hokkaido eventually became the Ainu.  

This view is shared by the earliest scholars working in the fields of history and archeology as well as some of the latest in Japan.  The following scholars can be included here even though there may be nuances to their views that may differ from each other.  Kindaichi Kyosuke, a pioneering scholar whose works such as Gongogaku ue yori mitaru emishi to Ainu, 1923, appeared before the war. Much of the pre-war literature in Japan and the West were of this viewpoint. Western scholars of Japan such as historian George Sansom shared this view in his work, A History of Japan to 1334, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958.

More recently, Takahashi Takashi in Emishi, 1986, was of the view that conservatively the Emishi were an Ainoid people who spoke an Ainoid language in areas of the Tohoku in what is today Iwate and Akita and Aomori prefectures.  Other scholars I have referenced on this site, in particular Ninno Naoyoshi in Emishi no Sekai (see Emishi fushu and ifu page) also shares this view.

This viewpoint emerged after the war, and has become the dogma of a sizable number of archeologists who have influenced historians in both Japan and the West.  Those who share this view are not at all similar, and range from seeing the Emishi as an entirely different group of people from both the Japanese (read Yayoi) and from the Ezo (read Jomon/Ainu), such as Ito Nobuo in Tohoku kodai no bunka no kenkyu, 1976, to those who see the Emishi as simply rebels in the Tohoku who fought the central government (but not ethnically distinct). Takahashi Tomio in Emishi, 1986, changed the terms of the argument from seeing or not seeing them as a separate ethnic group to simply seeing them as peoples who resisted incorporation into the Japanese state.  This had the unfortunate effect among recent scholars to downplay their cultural and ethnic differences. 

Despite this effect, the view that the Jomon/Ainu were just one component of the Emishi group as a whole does have merit.  Simply, the issue comes down to numbers for either argument diagramed: were the majority of the Emishi made up of Jomon ancestors? Depending on how this is answered scholars find themselves on one side or the other.